Today marks the 5th anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires that tore through Victoria, killing 173 people and razing thousands of homes. One of the hardest hit areas was Marysville, north-east of Melbourne, where only around 40 houses were left standing. Up to 90 per cent of residents decided to stay. As well as the physical rebuild, there's been an emotional one and different people have found various ways to cope.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires that tore through Victoria, killing 173 people and razing thousands of homes.

One of the hardest hit areas was Marysville, north-east of Melbourne, where only around 40 houses were left standing. Up to 90 per cent of the residents though decided to stay on and their new homes are peppered through the town.

As well as the physical rebuild, there's been an emotional one too and different people have found various ways to cope.

Reporter Rachael Brown caught up with a local steel band called the Hot Pans.

(Steel band can can music)

RACHAEL BROWN: A can can for Paris. Some of Marysville's steel band members have been invited to tour France. But this all started as musical medicine.

Band leader Rita Seethaler conducts the cacophony coming from what looks like the tops of chemical drums. Tell me about this amazing sound?

RITA SEETHALER: That instrument is hugely popular in Trinidad and Tobago where a lot of people can't read, let alone read music. Our brains were affected after Black Saturday with all the adrenalin and different chemicals being released in that fight and flight.

For example people couldn't read anymore - you can't concentrate. You read half a sentence and your brain fazes away. So I felt like on the cognitive side we need to do brain gymnastics with that music and at the beginning it was important this uplifting thing should be without words, because whenever people started talking about the fires, up came the tears and it felt overwhelming.

RACHAEL BROWN: Doug Walter, why do you find that music is such a good tonic?

DOUG WALTER: Well, it did distract us and it gave us something else to focus on and it gave us, the big thing was some hope and something to look forward to in the future.

RACHAEL BROWN: How many people have chosen to rebuild?

DOUG WALTER: Probably 80 or 90 per cent of people who have stayed have rebuilt. But there are just so many people who have gone, it's really a very sad thing and a hidden, I think a hidden tragedy.

RACHAEL BROWN: Do you worry that new people coming in, you know this tree change generation, carry a certain complacency because they haven't got the nightmares that you might have?

DOUG WALTER: A lot of the new people coming in cannot know what the potential experience is and some of them I know have not really prepared as well as I would counsel them to do. We were just talking a moment ago, our little group here, about how we all now hate summers. We are scared in summer.

TRAVIS GLEESON: I've noticed a lot more blocks cleaned up so they are getting ready for it. I know the bush is starting to thicken up a lot and there's not much you can really do about it in this kind of weather.

RACHAEL BROWN: I'm driving down Falls Road with First Lieutenant Travis Gleeson from the Marysville CFA (Country Fire Authority). Shire clean up notices were issued a while ago. Have people been pretty good with sticking to them?

TRAVIS GLEESON: Yup. These blocks here, they've had a go, but there's not a lot you can do without a machine I wouldn't think to get in there and really clean them out. I passed a lady here the other day with a handsaw trying to cut them down with a handsaw, so she wasn't going to go real well.

See all this is, all this is rebuilt. This is the first part of Marysville that got hit by the fire pretty much.

VOICE ON INTERCOM RADIO: Alexander Comms, do you copy me.

VOICE ON INTERCOM RADIO 2: Yeah, roger that ...

RACHAEL BROWN: I crunch across yellow grass to one rebuild - a guesthouse owned by the local GP Lachlan Fraser who's hosing his garden ahead of this hot weekend.

It's a phenomenal view.

LACHLAN FRASER: The view has improved a lot since the fire.

RACHAEL BROWN: And just some of the alpine ash yet to grow back on that ridge over there?

LACHLAN FRASER: That's right. That's up towards Lake Mountain and Mount Margaret so that'll take probably five or 10 years to green up.

RACHAEL BROWN: How close is Marysville, do you think, to being back to what it was?

LACHLAN FRASER: If you compared Canberra fires, I think it was 2004, after five years 40 per cent of the people had come back. So that's within a capital city with access to all facilities. So for Marysville to see half the residents or homes rebuilt, I think that's sort of on track.